Vita impressions

[jobocan]

Madmax (I think) asked for my impressions of the Vita once I got it so here they are (I was supposed to receive it last friday, but I got it on tuesday instead).

So I'll make this quick.

The screen is awesome (it's HUGE for a handheld screen and it's really high quality). The touch screen works perfectly, no problem there. The console is nice and bulky and doesn't cramp my hands up when I play it. The buttons are great other than the start and select buttons which I find to be a bit out of reach and hard to press. The d-pad is a bit weird but easy to get used to. The analog sticks feel a bit weird at first (kinda like tighter PS3 analog sticks) but are easy to get used to.
So far I haven't played anything that relied heavily on the back touch pad so I remain unconvinced about that whole thing (I did play the Little Deviants demo and it sucked, but that's mostly because of the game and not because of the pad).

So far I think it's an excellent console... now to wait for good games to come out for it! The next game I think I'll be buying for it is Gravity Rush in June. I currently have Army Corps of Hell which is quite fun and I have a rental for Hot Shots Golf which I'll probably keep (using the "keep it" option on gameaccess). The demos I played weren't interesting (Uncharted was lame, Katamari was lame, Little Deviants was bad, Unit 13 was bad), and I bought Escape Plan which I haven't tried yet.

[soera]

Are there any decent new rpg releases planned for it or is it just going to be backwards compatible with psp or something and just have to pick those up? I am really picky on my collection and dont have any interest in a system if its not going to have any unique games on it I would enjoy.

[jobocan]

So far I know there's a few games by Falcom planned (probably gonna be some Ys and Legend of the Heroes stuff on here), as well as Disgaea 3, FFX "HD" and Persona 4 Golden. There's also Warrior's Lair which seems like a potentially cool Diablo clone.
There's rumors of Final Fantasy Type-0 coming here as a Vita release, but I'll wait until official announcements.

 I'm not really sure about other RPGs planned, but we're early in the console's life and RPGs tend to take time to develop.

[psydswipe]

Are there any decent new rpg releases planned for it or is it just going to be backwards compatible with psp or something and just have to pick those up? I am really picky on my collection and dont have any interest in a system if its not going to have any unique games on it I would enjoy.

You can't actually pick up and play PSP games on it, only purchase and download digital copies since it can't run a UMD. You also have to buy the Sony memory cards that start at $20 for 4GB. I played the Vita some and it's not bad. I took a quick look at Uncharted but mostly played Hot Shots. The speaker placement isn't great because I had my hands over them when playing golf. I could still hear it but if you're using the D-pad and buttons then your hands fall on top of them as they are placed next to the analog sticks. Sounds better with headphones though anyway. The battery life isn't so great either.

[jobocan]

I haven't had any toruble with the speaker location so far, neither when playing Hot Shots Golf or Army Corps of Hell. As for the battery life... I don't really care since I almost only play handhelds in my room next to an electrical outlet... Yay for missing the point?

[varkias]

I picked mine up day one, I've only got 1 Vita game so far (Marvel vs. Capcom 3).  I've purchased a couple games off PSN.  I think the screen is AMAZING, even older PSP games look so damn nice.  I'm quite happy with battery life, 5 hours or so and  I tend to use the sleep mode a lot too.  The screen is very responsive to touch.  Controls take an hour or two to get used to but feel good.  I'm excited for Dragon's Crown from Vanillaware (look em up if you don't know this company) and Tales of Innocence R.   I plan on doing a lot of importing.  The browser is awful, if you own a PS3 you know what I mean and the Vita's is even worse.  I hope they invest more development time in it but I'm not holding my breath as the PS3's still sucks.  The data cable is now proprietary.  Game instructions are found on the game card only.  I highly recommend NOT buying the 3g version (I did not), you'll be throwing tons of cash in the toilet.  AT&T's plan are horrible and way overpriced.  You MUST buy a memory card for most games, saves, updates, PSN downloads and they are not cheap.  The Vita does have a cool backup feature through your PS3 if you buy a small card and want a larger one later.  I'm not sure if this was available the PSP, but then again you had full access to the data on the memory and could just copy the files off somewhere to back it up.  I'm overall very happy with my purchase, I want to see more developer support!  As much as I'd love to play my Saturn titles on this beautiful machine I hope it takes years to unlock.

@jobocan Gravity Rush does look really good!  I'm thinking about picking it up as well.

[amauriel]

For those interested, Aksys did confirm that the sequel to 999 (It's being called Good People Die in Japan and Virtue's Last Reward in the rest of the world) is going to be released for both the 3DS and Vita. If I wasn't such a 3DS lover that would be enough to justify a Vita for me.

[kirbysuperstar]

I hope later games stave off the touch-screen "waggle" fluff. Uncharted in particular is really bad for it. The pace is totally killed when Drake arbitrarily stops and assembles a torn up map because Sony/Bend were trying to hammer in that "HOLY GOD A TOUCHSCREEN" idea.

That being said, Nintendo never learned that a lot of that sort of thing was horrible (boss door keys in Skyward Sword, good God), maybe Sony won't either.

[jcalder8]

@kirbysuperstar, I wouldn't hold my breath for this. If the system has the feature it must be used!

[jobocan]

I hope later games stave off the touch-screen "waggle" fluff. Uncharted in particular is really bad for it. The pace is totally killed when Drake arbitrarily stops and assembles a torn up map because Sony/Bend were trying to hammer in that "HOLY GOD A TOUCHSCREEN" idea.

That being said, Nintendo never learned that a lot of that sort of thing was horrible (boss door keys in Skyward Sword, good God), maybe Sony won't either.

Yeah, the bad touch screen (and back touch pad) controls were one of the 2 reasons that really made me hate this version of Uncharted... The other being that it still has terrible gameplay like the other 3 games (I only kinda liked Uncharted 2, and it wasn't because of the herp derp cover-based gameplay).

As for Skyward Sword, that really confused me... For the most part the game had solid controls using the Motion Plus, and then you get that weird boss door opening minigame in every dungeon which was just way out of place... I think Nintendo has been better with this than the third parties that develop games on the Wii, but there's still these weird WTF moments.

[kirbysuperstar]

Ah, see I like Uncharted, so for me it's like this pretty enjoyable portable rendition of it keeps getting periodically ruined by stupid crap.

Skyward Sword's controls are pretty hit and miss for me.. bomb rolling frustrates the hell out of me, constantly having to reset the neutral position with the down button is annoying and the boss doors are just god-awful.

I mean, I'm fine with a 'bit' of waggle. If it could just be scaled back, y'know? I mean - when the DS came out there was some baaaaad waggle, like Mario 64 DS using the touchscreen as an analogue stick which was extra awful because it was resistive.. so much stuff using the microphone.. eventually developers realised "Oh, yeah. That stuff is pretty dumb.".

Maybe I'm just old (at 23) and crotchety and hate change.

[scott]

Oh I hated Mario 64 DS. The controls were horrible and you start off as Yoshi? Wtf. It was one of my original games from launch and I still haven't finished it.

[jobocan]

I mean, I'm fine with a 'bit' of waggle. If it could just be scaled back, y'know? I mean - when the DS came out there was some baaaaad waggle, like Mario 64 DS using the touchscreen as an analogue stick which was extra awful because it was resistive.. so much stuff using the microphone.. eventually developers realised "Oh, yeah. That stuff is pretty dumb.".

Yeah, I think it's normal for developers to see these new input methods on a console and thinking they HAVE to use them no matter what, no matter how dumb it gets (like using the touch screen to pick up weapons in Uncharted... was there a problem with just using buttons like in the other games?). In Uncharted's case, I'm guessing Sony forced them to use bad touch screen controls to "show off" the system's capabilities and such... which is a great way for it to backfire.
People who develop mainly on Sony consoles haven't experienced the "well, this is dumb" moments of the DS, and are likely to repeat it for the Vita.

[kirbysuperstar]

Oh I hated Mario 64 DS. The controls were horrible and you start off as Yoshi? Wtf. It was one of my original games from launch and I still haven't finished it.

Not to diverge too far off topic or anything, but funnily enough Mario 64 DS is still being sold in stores here at AUD$60. Nutters.

[amauriel]

Has anyone played Katamari for the Vita yet? I was dumbfounded by the way the back touch pad was used in that...have barely put any time into it. (Although I'd have to wrangle the Vita away from the husband to be able to play it, and it's easier to just play Pokemon.)